Trump thanks Putin for expelling American diplomats as apocalypse looms: Today in Tweets

Is this real life, or have we somehow all become bit players in some badly written parody of the world we once knew? I have no idea, but here are some tweets. Including some cute animals, which are the one constant in this Bizarro world of ours.

In 1995, Trump declared approximately 900 million in business losses from his Atlantic City casinos and other businesses on his taxes. You’re allowed to keep deducting a loss from certain types of income over a number of years, which means Trump probably paid close to $0 in taxes for a few years based on how much his businesses made in the 1990’s. So, most likely, he’s only made a significant amount of money from The Apprentice and the rest is from his dad.

Trump’s resume is that he graduated from UPenn and then worked at his family’s business, which usually isn’t the type of job you worry about getting fired from. Then he oversaw a bunch of business failures until finding a job as a game show host. He probably sincerely believed the diplomats weren’t on the payroll anymore.

@History Nerd, in addition, since like 2001, Trump’s been floated on a massive influx of Russian oligarch money laundering. He sold a $40 million house in Florida for close to $100 million, for instance, and a lot of his real estate is rented/leased/other by Russians.

Trump has consistently overvalued his properties for awhile. That, by itself, doesn’t prove anything, but overvaluing your properties or overestimating the scale of your operations is a textbook money laundering strategy. You consistently make it seem as though the large transactions are to be expected, because it’s less likely the investigators will go and actually do the work to see whether people are actually buying from you at fair market value.

It’s creepy. A number of conservatives have argued that biased reporting on environmental and social issues should be prohibited under libel laws. Or that a network must offer “equal time” to people with explicitly bigoted views.

Do you think if someone shot some interracial porn with Obama and Ivanka look-alikes and then managed to send Trump a copy it would enrage him into a fatal stroke?

Like, I 100% get the sentiment and desperately want him out of office, but do we really want to engage with the racist viewpoint that people of colour somehow “lower” their sexual partners? Or, for that matter, the sexist viewpoint that a daughter’s choice of sexual partners is in any way a reflection of the father?

Was there “lowering” in that? I thought it referred to how Trump in general has decades of well-documented animosity towards black people and sexist possessive attitudes towards women, and in specific either petty grievances or a massive inferiority complex towards President Obama and a creepy relationship with his daughter, so implying sexual relations between the two would hit almost every apoplectic button.

I might not be well informed enough about American politics (I’m from Quebec) or online trolling/twitter, but why the hell is that dude so pist about the Vogue cover? Yes, the Statue of Liberty is considered an icon of immigration and open border thanks to the famous poem ”The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, one of the most famous and defining poem in american history. How is it supposed to be odd to put a picture of a woman beside the Statue of Liberty (who is mind you a feminine symbol)? Plus, what the hell is MAGA supposed to mean?

@epronovost
The right feels a lot of ownership over patriotic symbols, plus all the political battles right now over women’s rights probably make them think a woman next to the Statue of Liberty is a statement supporting women’s freedom of bodily autonomy.

This is slightly off topic (but maybe not too much, given that Trump’s a big part of the reason) but I just got a survey in the mail from the ACLU and it has an open ended question asking if there are any observations or concerns that you would like to add about how are freedoms are at risk, either nationwide or in your community or state. Of course, this follows a very good list of their current concerns and what they’re actively working on, so I’m not sure what to add but I hate to waste an opportunity.

The other survey questions include this list; (I marked “very concerned” for everything, because I am miserably worried about all of it)

1.) Baseless claims about voter fraud sparking a new wave of voter suppression laws that make it harder for vulnerable voters to participate in the vitally important 2018 elections.

2.) The Trump administration launching a massive deportation force and ordering immigration raids based on racial and ethnic profiling that could target schools, hospitals, and churches and send thousands of immigrants into overcrowded and squalid detention centers.

3.) The anti-choice majority in Congress moving to defund abortion providers across the country, depriving millions of women of essential healthcare services.

4.) Donald Trump abusing power and undermining the rule of law in ways that have a lasting negative impact on our democracy.

5.) Emboldened extremists across the country escalating efforts to turn back the clock on reproductive freedom and LGBTQ rights.

6.) Religious discrimination that includes the Muslim ban imposing a religious test on refugees and others seeking to enter our country.

Does anybody have something I can add to that for the seventh question?

(I don’t comment here often because everyone is way better spoken than I am; this community is what I aspire to be. <3 )

I’ve been having a bit of legal fun myself. Much bewildered last week about a mystery building on some ground plans. So we all trooped out to the site. Then we realised it was just the text box with the document reference number.

Today I’ve been on a site sorting out the utility supplies for a new building development. There’s lots of legal issues about digging up roads and crossing boundaries; so it’s important to work out exactly where all the existing utility services run underground. We might have expected to rely on the official plans, but no, the guy from the utility company brought his dowsing rods. Works for me.

(Even sweeter would be if this hypothetical porn shoot portrayed the sex as affectionate and consensual and mutually enjoyable (since the only way someone like trump could conceive of interracial sex between a black man and a white woman would be “them xxxxxs is stealin OUR/MY wimminz”, plus also too women having and exercising sexual agency = doesnotcompute))

re the OP, trump plumbs new depths of showing his arse to the world. The payroll bollocks doesn’t even work as a joke. (could he really believe they’re no longer getting paid??? and how much of a dent does he imagine that would make in the national budget anyway!?!?!?!)

Wow. I’ve been scrolling through most of these twitter posts amused and exasperated, even the atomic one didn’t Really do more than make me sigh.

But the poll thing… Postponing the election. Fuck.
I guess I’ve been clinging to the hope that we’ll be rid of him somewhere along the line, that perhaps even the republicans want to have a more competent asshole as president, but. Wow.

They are aware that this sounds quite close to how we over here got saddled with Hitler, yes? How stupid are they?

(The following mostly applies to the 50% or so of Repubs that think postponing the next election is a good idea)
The alt-right would be quite happy if we got saddled with someone like Hitler, as long as they were part of the “approved group”. The rest of them are just going along with it, because they hate Democrats and liberal ideas, and still think Trump-Pence is a good way of keeping conservative ideas going.

Would not be Vlad for diminutive, would be volodya/vova/vladya. But i know Vlad is how Americans would make it.

I recall that a few years ago one reporter in Russia addressed Putin as Vova in a press conference, after he’d first addressed her in a condescending diminutive while sidestepping her actual question. So she ended the exchange with a sarcastic “Thanks, Vova.”

(This went viral and was eventually mentioned in a Finnish newspaper.)

The great thing about Putin being called Vova is that Vova is the butt of many Russian jokes. When I was in high school I went on a student exchange to Russia, and I remember my host dad spending every dinner telling silly Vova jokes (my Russian was too basic for more complex dinner topics). Anyway, I bet a power-obsessed egomaniac like Putin must really hate being called Vova.

The weirdest thing about this is… They live in America too. The people calling for nuclear strikes, the republicans wanting to keep him and all. How can they be unaware that the fallout – in all kinds of ways – is going to apply to them, too?

It’s how we would make it, yes, but also has the nice side effect of evoking that Romanian Vlad from history. And his horror movie counterpart. Vampirism or extreme sanctioning of rivals or critics sounds pretty pertinent to me for some reason.

Then he oversaw a bunch of business failures until finding a job as a game show host.

“But I repeat myself.” I don’t know about the US version of The Apprentice – perhaps it has some halfway-competent contestants on it sometimes – but for the UK version, “overseeing a bunch of business failures” is basically the host’s job description.

How can they be unaware that the fallout – in all kinds of ways – is going to apply to them, too?

These are the same people who want Obamacare repealed and immigrants deported even tho the latter keeps them fed and former keeps a lotta the fuckers alive. Fallout is demonstrably the least of their worries

@Valentine:
We used to have a Russian at my last job, Alexandre, who was usually called ‘Sasha’. And I would later learn that ‘Mikhail’ becomes ‘Misha’.

(And to anybody who can’t figure out how to get ‘Sasha’ from ‘Alexandre’… well, how do English speakers get ‘Dick’ from ‘Richard’ anyway? I suspect a lot of common diminutives date back centuries, with the long and short versions just changing in different directions over time.)

For those just tuning in, someone responded to anti-immigrant sentiment by quoting Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue. So that makes any photo spread involving the Statue of Liberty an attack on Trump and America in general.

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